Superheroes may possess incredible powers that allow them to perform impossible feats, but they’re rarely invincible. In both DC and Marvel Comics, writers have come up with plenty of iconic weaknesses for their heroes. By giving their heroes weaknesses, writers can craft more harrowing and exciting stories in which the heroes must overcome life-threatening challenges to save the day. Obviously, the most famous example is Superman’s aversion to the glowing green radioactive rocks known as Kryptonite. In contrast, street-level heroes like Batman and Spider-Man can be killed by a regular bullet. However, there are some weaknesses beloved superheroes have that are so ridiculous that they’re positively laughable.
Sometimes a superhero’s weakness is so bizarre that it inadvertently leads readers to view them as jokes. Indeed, many of these weaknesses were so weird and nonsensical that later writers retconned them out of existence, making the heroes even more powerful.
A core part of Iron Man’s origin story is that he was caught in an explosion that lodged shrapnel near his heart and needed to build a magnet in his chest to stay alive. However, while most readers today are familiar with the small yet endlessly powered Arc Reactor, for decades Iron Man’s life-saving battery was far more cumbersome. Instead of a small device, Iron Man’s original magnet was a large and heavy chest plate. Yet what really stood out was that it needed constant recharging. Iron Man would charge up his chest plate by plugging into the nearest electrical outlet. He would then be forced to sit around for minutes to even hours until he was recharged. Over time, the idea of Iron Man’s life being dependent on a nearby outlet eventually became too tedious and ridiculous to take seriously. Eventually, Iron Man developed a device called the R.T. node that could keep him alive indefinitely and assured him that he wouldn’t need to worry about misplacing his charger.
When a radioactive spider bit Peter Parker, he developed all the abilities of the eight-legged arachnids, including wall-crawling and super-strength. Unfortunately, he also inherited their weaknesses. In the same way that a person can deal with a spider infestation with bug spray, a criminal could take out the Wall-Crawler with the same type of substance. Specifically, Spider-Man is sensitive to ethyl chloride, a component often found in most bug sprays. When exposed to this type of gas, he immediately begins to lose strength, leaving him vulnerable to attack. And while most villains can’t get their hands on ethyl chloride, it’s one of the primary weapons of the nefarious Spencer Smythe and his army of robot Spider-Slayers. Still, over time, the aversion to ethyl chloride has generally been phased out in Spider-Man comics because it would be silly if any criminal with a can of bug spray could take out the Web-Head.
The first Green Lantern, Alan Scott, had no connections to the Green Lantern Corps and instead wielded the mystical Starheart ring to create anything he could imagine. However, no matter what Alan creates, whether it be lasers, swords, missiles, or tanks, none of them can overcome the unstoppable power of wood. Indeed, none of Scott’s constructs can lift or destroy anything that’s made of wood. So, anyone with a baseball bat, chair, or even a rolling pin could take out one of the supposedly most powerful heroes of the Golden Age. Over the years, many DC writers have attempted to explain why the Starheart is defenseless against wood. The origin of this weakness lies in the fact that, thousands of years ago, a rogue Green Lantern named Yalan Gur tried to harness the Starheart to take over Earth. To stop Yalan and limit the Starheart’s destructive potential, the Guardians of the Universe gave the ring its aversion to wood. To this day, wooden objects provide a significant challenge for Alan Scott.
There’s no weapon more iconic in Marvel Comics than Thor’s trusty hammer Mjolnir, which he uses to call upon massive storms and hit foes with planet-shattering strikes. However, Mjolnir had a significant drawback that made Thor even more dependent on it. For a long time in Thor’s early adventures, he operated under the secret mortal identity of Dr. Donald Blake. And while Mjolnir allowed Thor to switch from his mortal to god form and vice versa, there was a significant problem with it. The moment Thor lets go of his hammer, he only has 60 seconds to get it back to his hand before he is reverted to his defenseless Donald Blake form. Although this usually wouldn’t be a problem given Thor’s ability to summon Mjolnir to his hand, the moment that the hammer was out of reach or Thor had his hands full holding up a heavy object, things got serious. Luckily, when Thor lost his mortal Donald Blake persona and became a god full-time, he didn’t need to worry about always keeping one hand on his hammer.
Martian Manhunter is arguably the Justice League’s most versatile member with abilities including super-strength, flight, telepathy, heat-vision, shapeshifting, and intangibility. With such an overpowered character, writers gave him a weakness that’s always readily available: fire. Even being near the heat of a lit match makes Martian Manhunter significantly weaker. When exposed to larger flames, the hero will begin to lose control of his molecular structure and literally melt. Like Alan Scott’s Starheart, this weakness was implanted into the Martian race by the Guardians of the Universe. Once, the Martian race was known as the burned and was so powerful and malevolent that the Guardians turned their greatest strength into a weakness, so they could no longer pose a threat to the cosmos. So, whenever writers find themselves in a narrative corner with Martian Manhunter’s unbelievable power, they have someone light a fire, and suddenly the Justice League’s strongest hero is incapacitated for the rest of the fight.
It’s really bad when a villain’s color scheme can mean life or death for a Green Lantern. One of the most infamous superhero weaknesses of all time, a Green Lantern’s constructs were completely useless against anything that’s the color yellow. Whether it be a banana or a school bus, merely being covered by yellow makes an object invincible against the supposedly awesome and infinite power of a Green Lantern ring. Some of the most infamous examples of this weakness being exploited was Batman painting a room yellow and letting a yellow-painted Robin beat him up. Years later, visionary writer Geoff Johns revealed the reason that Green Lantern constructs couldn’t affect yellow objects. The source of this terrible weakness was that the villain Parallax had infected the Green Lantern Central Battery with an impurity, since the fear entity harnesses the yellow light of fear. Luckily, Hal Jordan and the rest of the Corps manage to purge this impurity and the lame weakness from the Central Battery.
Domino’s mutant ability to manipulate luck allows her to give herself good luck while her enemies experience bad luck. Such a superpower ensures that Domino can successfully evade most conventional weapons and threats. However, unlike other heroes on this list whose weaknesses have a physical effect on their bodies and powers, Domino’s vulnerability is strictly psychological. Despite her incredible powers and deadly skills, which give her a general daredevil attitude, Domino has a severe case of alektorophobia, the crippling fear of chickens. Just being in the proximity of one of these harmless farm animals causes Domino to freeze in terror, unable to move or speak. When Domino and Wolverine were going through an air vent, Deadpool put a chicken in there to block their path. The chicken worked like a charm as Domino could only stare in horror at the little bird. In this case, Domino was the true chicken.
For decades, Aquaman was seen as nothing but a joke and a useless hero because of his embarrassing weakness. While everyone needs water to survive, Aquaman needed near-constant access to water. For the moment Aquaman steps onto land, he only has an hour to get his hands on more water, or he’ll die. And within a few minutes, Aquaman will already start to become weaker and slower as rapid dehydration and inability to breathe take their toll on him. Since most crime happens on land, this made Aquaman practically useless for the majority of his publishing history. This glaring flaw in one of the founding Justice League members’ powers was initially addressed when Aquaman obtained an enchanted artificial hand made of water so he’d never dry out. And with the New 52 reboot, DC dropped the weakness entirely, so criminals now must fear the King of the Seas attacking them on land as well.
As a Kryptonian like her cousin Superman, one would think that Power Girl would naturally have an aversion to Kryptonite. However, although Power Girl isn’t vulnerable to Kryptonite, she traded it for a far worse weakness. Any raw material, whether it be wood or a rock, will injure Power Girl as if she were a regular human. So, despite having the strength to destroy moons literally, Power Girl will be rendered unconscious by a single bonk to the back of the head with a stick. It’s hard to say what exactly constitutes a “raw material,” since theoretically it should also include things like dirt, sand, water, and even the air. No explanation has ever been given for why Power Girl has this glaring weakness, and writers quickly realized it was stupid. Now, Power Girl has all the strengths and weaknesses of a regular Kryptonian and can go for a walk in the park without fearing for her life.
Since her conception, Wonder Woman has stood as a mighty heroine who uses her divine powers to fight the forces of evil. However, while she’s always been seen, more or less, as a feminist icon, her creator, William Moulton Marston, still gave the Princess of Themyscira a pretty sexist weakness. If Wonder Woman was tied up by a man, she immediately lost her powers. Even if it’s just her bracelets bound together, Wonder Woman would instantly find herself at the mercy of whatever man has ensnared her. It doesn’t even have to be some magic rope, as literally any regular rope or chain would leave Wonder Woman powerless. And this bizarre effect only occurred when men, and not women, tie her up. This weakness was called “Aphrodite’s Law,” and it followed the heroine well into the 80s. By that point, writers finally put together that having the inspiring heroine constantly bound and gagged by men was incredibly sexist and did little to portray her as a feminist role model. Now, no bindings can manage to hold back Wonder Woman’s incredible power.
